


Some Sentinel

by Karieauthoress (ksrandomme), ksrandomme



Series: Sandburg's Problem [2]
Category: The Sentinel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-30
Updated: 2009-03-30
Packaged: 2017-10-19 11:09:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/200164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ksrandomme/pseuds/Karieauthoress, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ksrandomme/pseuds/ksrandomme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim takes a moment to remember just when his friend started acting off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Sentinel

  
He’s reading another book when I come home. It’s my turn to cook, but I’m late, so I stopped by his favorite place for dinner. Well, it used to be… I don’t know next to anything anymore. Now, more often I get some offhand remark about how he manages to cook when it’s HIS turn.

  
Now I’m snipping… not good Ellison.

  
I set the bags on the counter and toss a glance in his direction. He hasn’t looked up. I figure I can take a moment to just gaze at him a moment. He seems so still. I worry about him a bit when he is like this. He used to be so animated, hard to handle, so ‘in your face’. Now he barely acknowledges me when I bring him a plate of dinner. He’s reading at the table, flagrant violation of the house rules, but do I say anything? Hell no, he pays rent now and if I was to say anything, he would be so angry he’d start packing. And I know I can’t handle that right now.

  
And here comes the panic.

  
It’s not like I can’t live without him… no, that’s not right. I really can’t live without him. He is still my anchor in this world. I haven’t told him about the troubles I’m having. I haven’t confessed to the fact that I have been using my senses less and less. I am afraid that if I tell him he will shut down. I don’t know when it happened, when he stopped caring, when he became this… silence. It’s almost enough to make me want to scream.

  
And then it hits me.

  
I know when this started. It was soon after he came back from the academy. I had paperwork piling up from a case that he hadn’t been on, so I was late getting home. He beat me there, said something about doing laundry and making dinner. We had argued a bit about it, because it was my night to cook. But he assured me it was fine. So color me surprised when I got home that night and the house was practically empty. All the lights were off and the stove was cold. And there was my partner, curled up on the couch, shivering from cold and very, very silent. The balcony windows were open and the night air had chilled him to the bone, yet he never moved.

  
I had tried to talk to him, ask him what was wrong. He appeared to wake up as if from a trance, blinked at me a couple of times, and then jumped to his feet, bounding around the kitchen, apologizing for losing track of the time. He was hiding something, but I couldn’t put a finger to it at the time. Now, as I sit on the couch after cleaning the kitchen, and after Blair has gone to bed in his little room under the stairs, I sift through my memories until I can find that night again. And I really LOOK at everything around me, and at him. I put all the training we’ve done over the years to every sense in the memory. And I find it.

  
Tears…

  
Well, hell… what do you think of that… I remember now that it’s the last time that I ever remember my partner crying.

  
How could I have missed it?


End file.
